[Profile Evaluation: 2020 Stats PhD]

29 minutes ago, Stat PhD Now Postdoc said:

The lack of research experience should not pose an issue, but just one question: you say that you are getting two letters of recommendation from "lecturers." Are these not tenured professors or tenure-track Assistant Professors? It would be far more preferable for you to get strong letters from tenured or TT professors (not lecturers or adjuncts) who can credibly speak to your research potential. Also, you do not need to submit more than three LORs, and the adcoms may only look at three of them (given time constraints), so I would recommend submitting three of the strongest ones you can from professors. They do not need to come from stats professors; they could all be from math profs.

Thanks! The fact that they are stats "lecturers" are because almost all those who teach stats classes at UCLA are lecturers. The tenure-track (assistant) professors in our stats department hardly teach any classes so I do not know any of them. I was just thinking that since one of them has title "senior continuing lecturer," which basically is a "tenure" lecturer, they might be better than adjunct math professors (who are basically post-docs).

[Profile Evaluation: 2020 Stats PhD]

Hello everyone, 

I'm currently a senior planning on applying to PhD programs in statistics or any related field (eg. operations research) for Fall 2020.

Undergraduate Institution: UCLA

Majors: Mathematics, Statistics (Double major)

GPA: 4.00/4.00 (cumulative) 

Type of Student: Domestic Asian Male

Relavant Courses:

Math: 

• Calculus I, II, III (A+, A+, A+)
• Linear Algebra (lower & upper level) (A+, A+)
• Differential Equations (lower level) (A+)
• Honors Real Analysis I, II, III (A, A+, A+)
• Honors Complex Analysis (A+)
• Applied Numerical Methods (A+)
• Probability Theory (A+)
• Intro to Financial Math (A+)

Statistics:

• Programming with R (A+)
• Intro to Mathematical Statistics (A)
• Linear Models (A)
• Intro to Data Analysis Regression (A+)
• Intro to Design and Analysis of Experiment (A+)
• Intro to Regression and Data Mining (A+)
• Intro to Computational Statistics with R (A+)
• Intro to Computation and Optimization (A+)
• Intro to Monte Carlo Methods (A)
• Python for Data Analysis (A+)

Programming:

• Intermediate Programming C++ (A+)
• Java Language and Application (A+)
• Python for Applications (A+)

GRE General:  165V/169Q/Writing unknown.

GRE Math Subject: 940 (99%)

Research Experience:

• No formal research experience, but will start a research beginning this fall under an assistant professor in the Stats/Communications department on computer vision
• A directed research project for two quarters under the guidance of a stats lecturer (more of a project than of research) on the topic of computer vision
• A Math Directed Reading Program for a quarter under a math PhD student on the topic of linear PDE.

Work Experience:

• Three internships, one in finance, two in actuarial science (one in risk management with a ML project, the other is accounting related)
• One part-time job as lab assistant tutoring programing in a computer lab.

Letters of Recommendation:

• Have not asked yet, but I am thinking about choosing from the following options:
• Three math professors that know me well from my Honors Analysis class (one is a tenure who taught me two real analysis classes, one adjunct who taught one real analysis, and one adjunct who taught me complex analysis) where I got A+ in almost all of them
• One stats lecturer with whom I did a directed research project on computer vision with and whom I took three stats classes (2 A+, 1A)
• One stats lecturer with whom I took two mathematical statistics classes with (I impressed him by getting ~90 on all the exams when the averages were all ~30)

 

As you can see, the weakness in my profile is the lack of research experience, despite of good GPA, GRE and GRE sub. So I am wondering what level of schools do I have a good chance into? I don't have a school list yet, and would like to seek feedback of the range of schools you recommend (like for example, what is the chance of me getting into phd programs of #10-20 ranking schools or what are the specifics schools that I have a good chance for?) and if there are other programs that fit my background other than statistics (eg. should I apply to operations research or something else?).

Thanks for your input!